BBC Tolkien in Oxford

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

I've been meaning to watch that programme for a long time now, and now that I've seen it, I can't help but feel disappointed. It seemed to have been put together without any real idea of what it should be about. The Verger of Merton was grudgingly allowed a few seconds of screen time to say something completely irrelevant about the history of the college, but was rather rudely cut out before he could say anything interesting, and the only other person worth listening to in the entire twenty minutes was JRRT. Those students were basically all awful, even the ones who liked LR: the plot synopsis girl in particular sounded as though she'd been dragged out of an opium den to trot out her tedious précis; and after the third use of the phrase 'social and political reality' I was wishing a slow and agonising death on the activist. As for those oh-so-laconic and bored undergraduates, whose politics just happen to be those that were fashionable among undergraduates at the time: they came across as boys trying to sound like men of the world; which is, of course, exactly what they were. I quite liked the prediction that LR would become a cult over here, though. It was the one thing any of the students said to suggest they belonged at university at all.

The interview components of the film seemed to have been cobbled together at random. One moment Tolkien is reminiscing about the old layout of Merton gardens the next he's demonstrating how to write in Tengwar, while in between we have two seconds of a callow sociology student demanding that we all put down our books and protest against whatever it is everyone's striking over this week. There was a meaningless scene of Tolkien at what I presume was a Guy Fawkes Night party, and other pieces that looked like the setting up of shots rather than the shots themselves. All in all, I'd only rate it as valuable because Tolkien was in it, and it gave something of an insight into his usual demeanour that most of us won't have had before. His comments about trees alone justified a documentary.

[Rune Son of Bjarne]

I rather enjoyed this short clip, even though it seemed like a prolonged clip from the news. . .
Like when they go and ask the people lying in sleepingbags in front of a bookstore "what is so special about Harry Potter?" and then go and ask the guy wearing a "I hate Harry Potter" T-shirt what he thinks about the books.

Also it seemed that one or two of the people in the clip where rather dim.

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Don't get me wrong: I liked the parts with Tolkien in them, especially those in which he was just chatting with the interviewer: the brief description of his time as Merton professor is pure gold. I just felt that it could have been a lot better if competent people had taken care of the editing and so much time hadn't been spent on uninspiring vox-pops.

As JRRT would have been well aware, the full quotation from which we derive the phrase 'vox populi, vox Dei' is Alcuin's warning that the voice of the people doesn't always make much sense. "Neither should they be listened to who only say 'the voice of the people, the voice of God', because the turbulence of the mob is always close to insanity."